Month: November 2018

There is a tragic story coming out of Dallas, Texas published in The Federalist about a 6-year-old boy named James who is caught in a life-changing, ideological tug-of-war between his divorced parents.

Divorce scars a child of any age but recent actions by the adults supposedly operating with the child’s best interests at heart may take the permanent damage to a much higher level.

We don’t know how it began but his mother, a pediatrician, took young James to “counseling” with an outwardly pro-LGBT therapist who diagnosed the boy with gender dysphoria. She advised his mother that he should be raised as a girl.

James’ mother enrolled him in first grade using the name, “Luna,” while dressing him as a little girl.

The diagnosis is tremendously critical for young James because he may be required to undergo life-altering physical changes — sterilization — in just two years when he is only eight years old.

It could be argued that searching for bigotry is now America’s favorite national pastime. To support the premise that all minorities are victims of a white male orchestrated society, virtually every aspect of everyday life is examined closely for even the slightest hint of racial prejudice.

Now, we find that Charlie Brown is accused of being a bigot — or rather his creator and animator, the late Charles Schulz.

This screen shot from “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,” that aired on ABC just before Thanksgiving was cited by many in the Twitter universe as an example of Schulz’s explicit bias by having Charlie’s black friend, Franklin, seated by himself on the opposite side of the table from Sally, Charlie, Peppermint Patty and Snoopy. Linus and Marcie are at the ends.

The New York Times has produced a propaganda video entitled, “How Capitalism Ruined China’s Health Care System.” It is intended to show how capitalistic changes in recent decades have nearly destroyed what the Times implies was the formerly great socialist health care system originally started by Mao Zedong.

The video is an incredibly deceptive production and untrue according to the writer who lives there and actually had her appendix expertly removed at one of the private hospitals in Shanghai. The Times video is clearly intended to use the trust people have in the news organization to indoctrinate a large segment of the American public that is currently leaning toward a socialist medical system.

An American expat living in Shanghai, Sarah Lilly, has written a critique of the Times video for The Foundation for Economic Education. She writes that there are many false statements and nearly all of its images are misleading.

(FINAL of a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)

The core belief of the Medicare for All advocates is that only a government-run, bureaucratic “Deep State” can solve the problems with medical care in America.

These socialists (after all, they are advocating adoption of one of the most socialized systems in the world) can’t even fathom that it is the unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy, and more recently the unaffordable Affordable Care Act, that have further damaged an already flawed medical payment system.

One only has to look at the Veterans Affairs (VA) system to get a glimpse of how national, government-run health care would (not) function. This authentic single-payer system has let our veterans down for years. A VA investigation in 2016 found that over 100 vets died just in Los Angeles County alone over a 9-month period while awaiting treatment. And this despite a $15 billion reform package that passed in 2014 supposedly to clean things up.

It is essential to recognized that even with all of our payment or insurance issues, actual medical care in America is second to none.

“300,000 acres and thousands of structures have burned in three enormous wildfires in California this week. Governor Jerry Brown has blamed fossil fuels and climate change.”

Most would think this news story was from this week but it is actually from September 2017.

This is the problem now in California: Nothing changes when it comes to radical “green” ideology overriding environmentally-conscious forest management.

Though the current fires in Northern California don’t yet make the all-time top three in terms of acres burned at 200,000, this one is the most deadly. And two of those top three all occurred within the last 12 months.

The current “Camp” fire is now the single deadliest in California history with over 40 dead, nearly all from one town, Paradise. Last year’s combined Napa and Sonoma wildfires that killed a total of 44 were the highest death toll from wildfires in a combined area.

A supreme court decision to acquit Asia Bibi prompted days of protests from some religious parties in Pakistan. Credit: AFP

Pakistan recently acquitted 54-year-old Christian farm worker and mother of five, Aasia Bibi, for blasphemy, a crime that called for the death penalty in that Islamic nation.She had been on death row there since 2010.

In June 2009, a quarrel ensued between Bibi, who had retrieved water for other workers during a scorching day, and two Muslim women who said they refused to drink from the same container a Christian had. The women subsequently accused Bibi of insulting Muhammad to one of the village’s mullahs. This was sufficient to get her charged by the government and sentenced to death.

(Sixth in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)

Few Americans are satisfied with the current health care system. But actual medical care in America is not the problem, it’s second to none. What needs fixing is how we pay for it.

The health care payment system in the United States is clearly in need of major reform. Our challenge as a prosperous society is to compassionately provide necessary medical care to those who have difficulty affording it but also to ethically relieve those now burdened with the cost of care of others through considerably higher medical bills or insurance premiums.

One of out of every five Americans don’t pay anything for their care – but somebody does. Doctors and nurses don’t work for free. The people who pay for this care are the “neighbors” of those who got it free or subsidized. What makes this so unethical is that those “neighbors” who end up paying more than what they legitimately owe are mostly being charged extra without their knowledge.

When people don’t pay the cost of a service or product, they want all of it they can get. It’s not a criticism of them, it’s simply human nature. Demand skyrockets when something desirable is free. I’ve had ER physicians tell me they’ve often seen the same people, on Medicaid or without any insurance at all, show up in ER routinely for the most minor of injuries or ailments. Everyone should pay something even if its nominal. It would discourage frivolous use.

The better solution is to move toward a market-oriented system that still benevolently provides care for the truly needy but doesn’t allow others to abuse the system by showing up in ER every two weeks with the sniffles.

(Fifth in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)

If the Democrats win the House on Tuesday, the first bill they may pass is “Medicare for All” since it already has over 120 co-sponsors. These now admitted socialists would destroy the world’s greatest health care system due to their arrogance and addiction to political power.

Nearly all previous socialist efforts to destroy the free market have started with the same premise: The current system is so bad, so troubling that government must step in to take remedial action by imposing itself into the marketplace. Phrases like “single-payer,” “universal health care” or the current favorite, “Medicare for All,” are attractive marketing phrases designed to promote expanded government power. In reality, “restricted health care,” “shared shortages,” or “inaccessible care” would be more accurate when describing such concepts.

To socialists, the free market can’t be trusted because it’s just not fair the way it uses merit to produce winners and losers. It’s why government and academia are so closely ideologically aligned. Many have never worked one day of their lives dealing with free market competition. They just know they’re smarter and have better ideas better than those less intelligent simpletons who are out there actually doing the work.

In less than two years, the policies passed by the Republican congress as pushed by President Trump have proved to be wildly successful in energizing the American economy.

The core principles of Trumponomics: low tax rates, rollback of (productivity-destroying) regulations and fair international trade has again made the United States the world’s strongest economic engine.

Even in the face of some of these trade skirmishes (not yet wars) and rapidly rising interest rates by the Federal Reserve, this week we had proof — surging real income, soaring productivity, high job creation and record low unemployment.

Over the last 12 months, wages and salaries (not including benefits) increased by 3.1%, considerably above the 2.3% growth in inflation (Consumer Price Index), illustrating that we have real income gains.

Productivity has now surged over 2% (2.2% in Q3) for two consecutive quarters. This is about double the annual productivity growth during the Obama years.

Jobs increased by 250,000 in October well above the 190,000 that were forecasted. Such recent growth in jobs has reduced the unemployment rate to just 3.7%, the lowest rate since 1969 or nearly 50 years.

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